


Wanting

by ElwritesFanworks



Series: Charlie and Lucien's Respective Issues [1]
Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: 1950s coping mechanisms, Alcohol, Anxiety, Charlie has daddy issues, Daddy Issues, Drunken Kissing, Drunkenness, Foot Massage, Homesickness, Insomnia, Lucien has misplaced feelings of paternalism, M/M, Minor Injuries, No Sex, Repression, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Urination, Vomiting, brief mentions of Lucien's war service, drunk!Charlie, pushy!Charlie, refusing sex on the basis of drunkeness not allowing for consent, the unpleasant consequences of getting really drunk, this is self-indulgent to an extreme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:49:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9669548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: On the first night of his stay at Blake's house, Charlie Davis can't sleep.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. Yet again I make my debut in a fandom with obscure fetish shit. Damn it all - when will I learn?
> 
> This is set, as the summary suggests, when Charlie has just moved into Lucien's house. Yeah.

* * *

Well after midnight on his first night there, Charlie Davis wanders the halls of the Blake home like a ghost. He can’t sleep. The sounds of this house won’t let him sleep. The animal noises – birds and insects – are a cacophony outside his window. If he leaves it open, he is deafened, but if he shuts it, his room heats up to the point that he’s soaked with sweat and sticking to his sheets. The house itself sounds different too – creaking and groaning, as old buildings do – but with none of the ambiance of his family’s place in Melbourne, and none of the snoring and grunting of the other occupants of the boarding house.

Faced with insomnia, Charlie is unwilling to lie still with his thoughts and worries spinning around and around _ad nauseam_ in his own head. It’ll drive him mad. With any luck, the doctor has left one of his copious bottles of liquor out where it would be within the realm of socially acceptable behaviour for Charlie to fix himself a drink.

His pajamas are still damp with perspiration as he tiptoes, barefoot, out into the hall. The moist flannel clings to his back and thighs, and the curve of his backside, and he shivers at the sensation. The temperature in the hall is much cooler and the climatic shift makes him break out in gooseflesh. His nipples are hard, rubbing themselves raw on the inside of his top. He feels uneasy, too aware of his own body, as a bead of sweat trickles down his back.

Somewhere, a clock is ticking. Charlie’s feet make no sound as he pads across worn flooring. He turns a corner and sees it – a faint glow coming from the living room. A lamp is on. Someone else is awake.

Irrational, childish fear courses through the young man at the thought of running into Mattie or Mrs. Beazley under-dressed as he is. He loses his nerve, turning abruptly to make haste back to his room, and trips over an inconveniently placed umbrella stand. Pain shoots up his leg and he only just manages to bite off a curse. Footsteps. He shuts his eyes in a primal, pre-rational impulse. _They can’t see you if you can’t see them._

“Charlie? Are you alright?”

It’s the doctor, and his whisper is low and deep. Charlie opens his eyes and meets the older man’s gaze. He tries to straighten up, and winces as pressure is put on his stubbed toes.

“Just tripped,” he answers back, equally quiet.

“What are you doing in the hall?”

Blake doesn’t sound angry – just curious.

“I was –”

Charlie pauses. The lie that he was just going to the toilet comes to mind, but if that were the case, he’d be at the other end of the hall.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Something passes over Blake’s face, an unreadable expression, and his eyes soften.

“Yes… it can be a bit difficult, falling asleep for the first time in a new place.”

He waits a beat, then, “Would you like a drink?”

Charlie nods and takes a step forwards before remembering his foot. He hisses, cringing, and Blake frowns.

“Let’s go to my study. I’d like to have a look at your foot, if you don’t mind.”

Charlie hobbles after Blake, knowing there will be liquor in it for him if he complies, and that is how he finds himself sitting in the doctor’s study, downing his sixth consecutive spirit of the night, as Lucien lifts his bare foot into his lap. It took Charlie three drinks to break the silence that had settled between them, and another two to work up his nerve to even let Blake examine him, and in that time, they’ve relocated from chairs to the floor. Blake’s vest and tie are gone – flung somewhere – and he’s undone the uppermost three buttons of his shirt. He’s still dressed for a day’s work, even at this late hour, meaning he hasn’t even attempted sleep. Charlie feels a bit absurd with nothing but a thin layer of flannel between his skin and the warm air in the study, and he is, suddenly, irrationally, seized with an anxiety that the loose garments are giving too much of him away. He holds his tumbler over his lap, the makeshift shield doing little for his nerves. He is more conscious of the position of his flaccid penis than he’s ever been in his life, paranoid that Blake is aware of it too, and is somehow judging him for it.

Blake’s hands are big, dry, and gentle as they rotate his foot this way and that. The doctor scrutinizes each toe, noting scraped knuckles and the beginnings of what will likely be a fairly spectacular bruise. Each movement of his fingers, each glide of the pads of his thumbs over the sole, is making little jolts shoot up Charlie’s leg. He’s never known his feet to be particularly sensitive before, but all of a sudden, they’re… not quite ticklish, but… tingly. He’s aware, belatedly, that the pleasant lulling sound that’s been building is, in fact, Blake engaging him in conversation.

“Forgive me for prying – it’s the medical mind in me, I’m afraid. Do you often suffer from insomnia?”

Charlie shakes his head, and it feels like it’s doubled in size. He blinks, briefly disoriented, and steadies himself with a sip of his drink, which burn a little on the way down.

“S’just… this house. It sounds… different.”

Blake nods, intrigued.

“Different… different from the boarding house, you mean?”

“Mm. And from home.”

He doesn’t need to clarify what he means by that.

“Are you homesick, Charlie?”

Charlie turns the words over in his head, looking for a jibe or an insult, but he finds none.

“I… don’t know,” he admits. “Seems a bit funny, to be homesick now, when I’ve been in Ballarat all this time.”

Blake shakes his head.

“Not necessarily. Memories can be unpredictable things.”

He hesitates, drains his glass, and clears his throat.

“When I was in the service, I wasn’t often homesick, but when I was, it was usually because something had reminded me of life here. A song on the radio, perhaps, or a letter from a friend. I imagine being here is much more like home than the boarding house, correct?”

Charlie realizes Blake’s asking him a question. He opens his mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a vague ‘uhh.’ He shifts and his hand drops heavily to the floor. He looks down at it, sees his empty glass, and holds it out, inquiring.

“I think you’ve had enough for tonight. More than enough – I forget, you’re not used to the stuff.”

Blake takes the glass and sets it aside, out of harm’s way, ignoring the noise of protest that Charlie makes. The younger man hiccups and sniffs, wiping stubbornly at his lower lip when he feels drool beginning to gather there. He wriggles his foot in Blake’s grasp.

For the past ten minutes or so, the doctor’s been doing little more than tracing patterns on it absentmindedly. It feels good. Charlie finds he enjoys the heat from the older man’s hands. He pulls his other leg over, nudging it against Blake’s thigh. The doctor raises his eyebrows.

“Did you smash this one into something as well?”

“S’warm,” Charlie answers sleepily. Blake palms his uninjured foot and winces.

“You’ve got ice blocks where your feet should be, Charlie.”

“Mm.”

“Do you always have such poor circulation?”

Charlie takes his time interpreting that. When he opens his mouth to answer, he hiccups again, his stomach rumbling unhappily.

“Don’t… I feel… m’drunk,” he mumbles. Blake nods.

“That you are. I’m sorry, Charlie – I shouldn’t have assumed your tolerance –”

“Wanna… go t’bed.”

“That’s admirable, given your earlier state, but I can’t send you to bed like this. What if you were to be sick in the night? You could choke.”

This strikes Charlie as profoundly hypocritical, as he’s fairly sure the doctor would allow _himself_ to take such a risk. He leans forwards, intending to speak his mind, but all that comes out is a dazed realization.

“Need the toilet…”

He blinks owlishly, unsure of the legitimacy of the faint pangs he’s feeling in his abdomen. He reaches between his legs and squeezes before he realizes he’s doing it. The head of his prick is damp through the flannel, and when he spreads his thighs and looks down, a bead of saliva descends from his mouth and lands on his hand. He stares at it in confusion before a touch on his shoulder makes him jump.

“Let’s get you to the facilities, then. Do you think you can walk by yourself?”

Charlie mumbles… something. Blake’s really close to him, though he can’t remember the doctor having moved. He can smell the older man distinctly – fresh sweat, alcohol, hair oil, aftershave. It’s a nice smell. A fatherly smell, Charlie supposes. Authoritative, but fundamentally safe. He cranes his head towards it, bumping his forehead against Blake’s shoulder.

The doctor pulls away from him, slipping hands under his armpits and helping him to stand on shaky legs. Charlie is reminded, muzzily, of a new lamb, wobbling its way into the world, and the image makes him smile, even as a drop of urine escapes him and runs down his thigh. Blake must notice the subtle shift in him, the soft sigh or the fluttering of his eyelids, because he marches Charlie down the hall in record time.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Davis is drunk. Too drunk – Lucien curses himself. He let the boy match him, drink for drink, without thinking. He’d been a fool to allow it, and now, the young policeman is too far gone to stand upright, let alone relieve himself. He makes a distressed sound, tugging ineffectively at the waistband of his pajamas, until Lucien steps up behind him and asks if he needs any help. Rather than answer, Charlie just lolls back against Lucien’s chest, arms falling limply at his sides.

It is not unfamiliar territory. Lucien has helped patients to pass water before. Nevertheless, that it is Charlie Davis’s fly beneath his fingers, or Charlie Davis’s length in his hand, strikes him as different in ways Lucien isn’t quite sure he wants to examine too deeply. He just helps the young man line up, and murmurs that it’s alright, he can go ahead now.

Charlie pisses like a racehorse, moaning softly in primitive, animal relief. His neck and face are flushed and he smells of pomade, sweat, and soap. Lucien can’t get away from it, the smell, as the younger man’s scalp is all but mashed against his nose at this angle. When at last Charlie’s stream slows to a stop, Lucien shakes him off and tucks him back into his pajamas. He moves to wash his hands, still propping Charlie up with his shoulder, when the young man turns and says something so incoherent it takes Lucien a full two minutes before he parses it into something resembling normal English.

_Why’d you stop?_

Lucien freezes at that. Stop what? Stop helping him stand? Stop – and he knows, then, and it brings a rare blush to his cheeks, just as Charlie shuffles forward and sloppily kisses his jaw. His mouth is too wet, it glances off and slides towards Lucien’s ear entirely by accident, so that when Charlie speaks next, his breath is a cloud of warmth against the doctor’s lobe.

“Keep going.”

If Lucien had any doubts about the meaning of Charlie’s words, they’re banished when Charlie grabs at his hands and attempts to shove them under his clothes. Drunk as he is, Charlie is no match for Lucien in terms of motor function, and the doctor easily untangles himself, but what startles him is the significant part of him that doesn’t entirely want to.

He’s no stranger to his own mind, to his impulses and thoughts and instincts. Doctors, as a rule, are a protective bunch, and, in Lucien’s case, that instinct has only grown in the aftermath of contacting his daughter. It’s a fascinating quirk of the psyche, the rush of paternalism that hit him low in the gut when he had to help Charlie use the toilet, and which has continued to smolder somewhere just south of his waistline ever since. Drunk as he is, Charlie is helpless – vulnerable – and Lucien is hyper-aware of that fact.

“Y’smell like... fatherly,” Charlie slurs. “S’good.”

It is good – it’s _too_ good. Lucien knows himself very well indeed, has had to draw his lines in the sand before. He’s seen the sort of man he would be if he didn’t – he’s seen it in vivid, gruesome detail. Battlefield _tableaux_ of human horror. There are, he knows, many men who would take the first opportunity to have their way with no thought to anyone else. Charlie’s a grown man, yes, but in this moment, he is as vulnerable as a child, and Lucien will never, never allow himself to become the sort of man who takes what is not given willingly and knowingly, with a clear head.

“You need to go to bed,” he says firmly. “Do you think you’re going to be sick?”

Charlie says no, and almost immediately afterwards, doubles over the sink. It’s not ideal, too high and shallow for a job like this, but it’s better than on the floor, or down the front of himself. Lucien allows himself the indulgence of stroking the younger man’s hair in comfort – though comfort for whom, he is uncertain. He helps Charlie wash his mouth out, making a note to clean the sink once the boy’s in bed – it would not do to have Jean or Mattie stumbling across the mess in the morning. All the way back to his room, Charlie hands wander and he is glued to Lucien’s side. He doesn’t protest to being tucked into bed, but he does protest to Lucien’s refusal to join him in it.

“Come back,” he pleads, eyes huge and moist. Lucien knows his weaknesses, and it’s all he can do to say no, firmly, but not unkindly, and give Charlie a collegial pat on the shoulder. God willing, he’ll have forgotten it in the morning.

“Goodnight,” Lucien tells him, with assurances that he’s not abandoning him – that he’s just a shout away in an emergency. He’s at the door, trying to banish the worst of his thoughts, when he amends his earlier farewell, crossing back over to Charlie's bed to smooth his hair off his forehead and press a chaste kiss to his brow. His lips move against warm skin.

“Sleep well, son.”

Lucien knows when he says it that he’ll be chastising himself for the foreseeable future, but it’s worth it for the look of sincere wonder that lights up the young man’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote all this in one sitting and any editing errors are mine - I am a one-man fanfiction production team. 
> 
> (And by production team, I basically just mean sentient garbage fire burning in a train car as the train is sent careening off a cliff.)


End file.
